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Gaudissart II-Part1_Honore de Balzac(1799-1850)_Translated Works(翻译文学)-第2页

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whom the King of the French receives at his table, to the red-bearded

head of the department with his autocrat's air. Week by week these



meritus Gaudissarts are brought in contact with whims past counting;

they know every vibration of the cashmere chord in the heart of woman.



No one, be she lady or lorette, a young mother of a family, a

respectable tradesman's wife, a woman of easy virtue, a duchess or a



brazen-fronted ballet-dancer, an innocent young girl or a too innocent

foreigner, can appear in the shop, but she is watched from the moment



when she first lays her fingers upon the door-handle. Her measure is

taken at a glance by seven or eight men that stand, in the windows, at



the counter, by the door, in a corner, in the middle of the shop,

meditating, to all appearance, on the joys of a bacchanalian Sunday



holiday. As you look at them, you ask yourself involuntarily, "What

can they be thinking about?" Well, in the space of one second, a



woman's purse, wishes, intentions, and whims are ransacked more

thoroughly than a traveling carriage at a frontier in an hour and



three-quarters. Nothing is lost on these intelligent rogues. As they

stand, solemn as noble fathers on the stage, they take in all the



details of a fair customer's dress; an invisible speck of mud on a

little shoe, an antiquated hat-brim, soiled or ill-judged bonnet-



strings, the fashion of the dress, the age of a pair of gloves. They

can tell whether the gown was cut by the intelligentscissors of a



Victorine IV.; they know a modish gewgaw or a trinket from Froment-

Meurice. Nothing, in short, which can reveal a woman's quality,



fortune, or character passes unremarked.

Tremble before them. Never was the Sanhedrim of Gaudissarts, with



their chief at their head, known to make a mistake. And, moreover,

they communicate their conclusions to one another with telegraphic



speed, in a glance, a smile, the movement of a muscle, a twitch of the

lip. If you watch them, you are reminded of the sudden outbreak of



light along the Champs-Elysees at dusk; one gas-jet does not succeed

another more swiftly than an idea flashes from one shopman's eyes to



the next.

At once, if the lady is English, the dark, mysterious, portentous



Gaudissart advances like a romanticcharacter out of one of Byron's

poems.



If she is a city madam, the oldest is put forward. He brings out a

hundred shawls in fifteen minutes; he turns her head with colors and



patterns; every shawl that he shows her is like a circle described by

a kite wheeling round a haplessrabbit, till at the end of half an



hour, when her head is swimming and she is utterly incapable of making

a decision for herself, the good lady, meeting with a flattering



response to all her ideas, refers the question to the assistant, who

promptly leaves her on the horns of a dilemma between two equally



irresistible shawls.

"This, madame, is very becoming--apple-green, the color of the season;



still, fashions change; while as for this other black-and-white shawl

(an opportunity not to be missed), you will never see the end of it,



and it will go with any dress."

This is the A B C of the trade.



"You would not believe how much eloquence is wanted in that beastly

line," the head Gaudissart of this particular establishment remarked



quite lately to two acquaintances (Duronceret and Bixiou) who had come

trusting in his judgment to buy a shawl. "Look here; you are artists



and discreet, I can tell you about the governor's tricks, and of all

the men I ever saw, he is the cleverest. I do not mean as a






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